10. Conclusion

Throughout this book, Thompson and Company has been reconstructed, re-evaluated on its own terms, and resituated in the historiography of finance, commerce, and politics. This chapter draws this study to a conclusion and discusses the broader, macro, ramifications of this microhistorical case study for Restoration society, and its commercial, financial, and political culture. It argues for the importance of studying institutions, emphasising the role of entrepreneurial institutions and those geared towards private, as opposed to public, finance in the traditional narrative of England’s commercial and financial development. The case of Thompson and Company also questions the scope of the Financial Revolution, the role of reputation in the collapse of credit networks, and the nature of household and institutional credit. Overall, it demonstrates the close intertwining of finance, commerce, and politics in seventeenth-century England, and the pervasiveness of risk across all aspects of society.